Maisie Supposed to Know: Amo(u)ral Analysis

Abstract

The Henry James Review Spring, 1984 cism will be one of the instruments for reproducing ideology in such a society is a question that cannot be answered in advance of the arrival of that society on the stage of history. And even if, against the odds, the Modern Language Association survives for another hundred years, it is by no means certain that Henry James wiU occupy an honored place at any bicentennial celebration. For it is perfectly possible that a number of conceivable future societies wiU find in his texts nothing but blanks. NOTES The present text is a somewhat modified version of response to papers by Bruce Robbins, Mimi Kairschner, and Mark Seltzer delivered at the Modern Language Association convention in December, 1983. I have taken the liberty of bringing certain of the formulations into line with later versions of their papers but have not thought it necessary to change the essential drift of the argument. Session II: The Psychoanalytic Maisie Supposed to Know: Amo(u)ral Analysis by Dennis Foster, Southern Methodist University "Not so long ago, a little girl said to me sweetly that it was about time somebody began to look after her so that she might seem lovable to herself."—Jacques Lacan It is hard not to like that flirt Maisie, as James so evidently does, though we risk our critical souls in doing so. We like her because she is clever and bright. But we like her more because she endures her association with her misbehaving guardians and retains her freshness, or because, pitifully, she faüs to retain it—there is some disagreement here. But in either case, she represents something very fine that we associate with James's own artistic and moral sensibilities. Many critics find that James teaches his readers through this book to read or see or experience in such a way as to let them participate in this Jamesian perspective: just as James the master knows, we may come to know. And thus insofar as we identify with Maisie, we apparently identify with James, a relation Juliet Mitchell develops in her wonderful essay on Maisie, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl." How disconcerting it would be, then, if it were the adults, rather than Maisie, we resemble. MitcheU points out that we must share their corrupt knowledge of adultery and betrayal if we are to make sense of the book, but it is less their knowledge than their vision of Maisie that links us to them. Most readers see her as a victim, as a "baU" in an adult game. Even James says she is a "shuttle-cock," a character passively filling roles the others create, mouthing their words. Yet at the same time, just because she has learned to repeat their words back to them, they suppose she has considerable authority in their game, suppose she knows truths about their sordid lives and has even learned to judge them, as if she knew how they were supposed to behave. Lacan's paradigm for the relation of subject to the other provides an approach to the book that suggests why Maisie is supposed to know and to be what she seems to for the adults—and how Maisie might exploit the situation. Maisie need not know dark truths (just as the analyst does not know his analysand, just as the ocelli, the spots on a moth's wings, do not see the bird) so long as she appears to satisfy the formal conditions of knowing, so long as she speaks Volume V 207 Number 3 The Henry James Review Spring, 1984 the language of knowing. Then she will be created as the one who knows, which in the Lacanian model would place her, eventually , in a position of mastery. Maisie discovers very early that by developing a thoroughly "superficial" language , she can powerfully affect her companions . Consider Maisiè's situation for a moment. From the time she is very young she is shunted between parents who pay little attention to her beyond loading her with hate mail for one another. She depends on her governesses for affection and protection, but they can be dismissed at any moment...